Microsoft has been struggling a little bit, especially after having to cut out so many jobs. New news from Lenovo just adds to the pain. Lenovo is the worlds largest PC vendor, and they have said that they are going to some selling one of their small screen Windows tablets in the United States.

On Thursday Lenovo confirmed that the 8.3 inch Thinkpad 8 would not be available on store shelves in the states anymore. On top of that, the 8 inch Miix 2 has already sold out in the states and there has been no word on restocking. This means that Lenovo is going to have zero small screen tablets available in the U.S.

The company has observed that their customers in the U.S. are more interested in Windows tablets with bigger screens, and they are really happy with the response that the ThinkPad 10 has gotten. The ThinkPad 8 has done way better in other markets like China, Brazil, and even Japan. They are pretty much just delivering the goods where they are wanted the most. Smart move for Lenovo, bad news for Microsoft.

The small demand may come from the fact that Microsoft ignored the small screened tablet world for a very long time. The iPad mini was already out and so were a lot of other Android and tablets, including Samsung’s Galaxy tab, before Windows even offered support for tablets of that size. By that time it was too late and the market had already been spoken for. Even Asus, Acer, and Dell has their own smaller tablets out on the market that had been doing pretty well. And even now, some of the apps for Windows are a little wonky on smaller screens. It’s just not working.

Microsoft still has a lot going for them with tablets. They do great with larger ones. They provide a superior computing experience, and tablets like the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 have gotten awesome reviews.

Lenovo will probably offer smaller tablets again at some point, but for right now Microsoft is going to have to focus on their bigger tablets and possible start working on a game plan for their next shot at a big release of a smaller tablet. They have said that they will probably still put out another one in the U.S. before the end of the year to see how it does, so Microsoft should start preparing.

The new 10 inch tablet with a detachable keyboard from Lenovo wasn’t supposed to hit the market until March, but you might be pleased to know that it has been released early, as seen on the company’s U.S. web store. This was first spotted by Engadget. Although this anticipated tablet has hit the scene a little bit early, you might want to wait a little bit before committing to buy.

Lenovo was showing off the new Miix 2 tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show in January of this year. They very clearly stated that the maximum price that the Atom processor-powered version of the tablet would be selling for would be $499. The price didn’t seem too crazy, because you were getting a 10 inch display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, an Intel Atom Z3740 processor, the 32 bit version of Windows 8.1, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013, 2GB of RAM, 128GB of eMMC storage, Wi-Fi compatibility, and Bluetooth 4.0. These are pretty awesome specs for a tablet with a detachable keyboard.

If you take a minute to look at Lenovo’s online store, there are currently two different variants of the Atom-powered Miix 2 tablet which are priced at $699 and $749. This doesn’t seem to make too much sense because of the previous announcement saying that the most expensive one would be priced at $499. That, however, is not the only thing that should concern you at this point.

Here is where things get crazy. The more expensive one should have some sweet perks right? Well, for the extra money, the only perk you get is half the amount of internal storage. Yes, you read that right. You only get 64GB of storage with the more expensive model.

According to some of the forums on their website, this is probably an error. Although, the error still has not been corrected at the time of writing this. Maybe the whole entire thing is a mistake on their part and the prices will be lowered? Either way, I suggest you hold back your excitement and wait for this to get cleared up.

The 10 inch version isn’t the only Miix 2 being released this year. In April, Lenovo will be putting out an 11 inch version of the tablet with a better processor. This version will have a starting price of $699. But you never know, after this, it might come out early as well!

For a while, rumors of a new 8 inch Windows tablet from Asus have been floating around. In mid December, some specs got leaked, and recently, a user manual for the Asus VivoTab Note 8 randomly popped up on Asus.com.

The new tablet hasn’t been announced by Asus yet, and no one knows when the manual was published on the website or if it was mistake or not. Either way, it leads us to believe that there may be a big announcement about the new tablet at the CES trade show in a few days.

The manual that popped up didn’t mention anything about the specs of the tablet, but the previously leaked information said that the device will be powered by a 1.33GHz Intel Atom “Bay Trail” Z3740, an 8 inch display with 1280 x 800 resolution, 2 GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage space, a microSD slot, a 1.2 megapixel front facing camera, and a 5 megapixel rear facing camera. It also comes equipped with Windows 8.1 and a free version of Microsoft Office 2013 Home and Student.

The specs are almost identical to the Dell Venue 8 Pro and the Lenovo Miix 2. Throwing another tablet in the mix with basically the same exact specs, it makes it seem like we will have the same problem we had with the early Windows Phones. There will be literally nothing to differentiate one from the other besides the name of the manufacturer printed on it somewhere. The newly discovered online manual confirms this, but does not mention Wacom. Other competing 8 inch tablets offer styus support, but Wacom is the best and would be the main advantage to the new Asus tablet.

There is currently no word on availability or pricing for the device yet, but Asus will more than likely make more announcements on that at CES. Asus was a little bit late to the tablet game, but they were one of the first computer companies rumored to be working on a Windows slate, and it seems like they may be a little bit ahead of the curve, despite their lateness.

Microsoft has announced the release date for their Surface with the Windows 8 Pro operating system as February 9th, 2013.

The Surface with Windows 8 Pro has gone through a major overhaul when compared to the Surface with Windows RT.

The Windows 8 Pro operating system will allow users to continue using Windows 7 applications and will integrate with your existing infrastructure. The security system underwent significant upgrades. AppLocker and Group Policy will now allow application and security policy control. BitLocker gives the user the enhanced data protection. Furthermore, Windows 8 Pro is compatible with third party security systems.

The Surface Pro with Windows 8 offers more memory than the Surface with Windows RT. The Surface Pro comes in both 128 GB and 64GB models with 7GB of free cloud storage. Each model is packed with 4GB of RAM. The Surface Windows RT comes with only 32GB or 64GB models.

The screen is another Upgrade with the standard now being a 10.6″ with 16:9 and 1920×1080.

The new system is now 13.5 mm in thickness and weighs 2 lbs. In comparison the Windows RT is 9.3 mm in thickness while weighing in at 1.5 lbs.

USB port is now a 3.0 versus the 2.0 and the HD video out port has been replaced with a Mini Display Port. The Mini Display Port is an open source port and allows for higher resolutions using smaller connections.